Margaret Atwood and Carl Hiaasen | LIVE from the NYPL

To open the Fall 2013 season, Margaret Atwood, author of the Oryx and Crake trilogy, will be joined in conversation by novelist and columnist Carl Hiaasen, whose most recent work is the bestselling Bad Monkey.

MaddAddam continues the dystopian themes that characterize both Oryx and The Year of the Flood, in which Atwood creates a compelling fictional reality that forces her readers to reflect on the current issues of their own. In conversation with journalist and author Carl Hiaasen, Atwood will reflect upon the dystopian themes running through her recent work and look back on her remarkable career.

Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and honorary degrees. She is the author of more than fifty volumes of poetry, children's literature, fiction, and non-fiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman (1970), The Handmaid's Tale (1983), The Robber Bride (1994), Alias Grace (1996), and The Blind Assassin, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000. Atwood's dystopic novel, Oryx and Crake, was published in 2003. The Tent (mini-fictions) and Moral Disorder (short stories) both appeared in 2006.

Her most recent volume of poetry, The Door, was published in 2007. Her non-fiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, part of the Massey Lecture series, appeared in 2008, and her most recent novel, The Year of the Flood, in the autumn of 2009. Ms. Atwood's work has been published in more than forty languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian. In 2004 she co-invented the Long PenTM.

Carl Hiaasen was born and raised in Florida. He is the author of twelve previous novels, including the best-selling Star Island, Nature Girl, Skinny Dip, Sick Puppy, and Lucky You, and four best-selling children's books, Chomp, Hoot, Flush, and Scat. His most recent work of nonfiction is The Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport. He also writes a weekly column for The Miami Herald.